A model of privacy and security for electronic health records

Abstract

Information and communication technology has created excellent development in over the past few years in the field of medicine and healthcare. Healthcare is constantly undergoing changes, with new medical technologies, business models and research findings. The requirements for security and privacy are also very critical and very difficult to satisfy in case of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) data especially as compared to any other data. This is due to the conflicting needs of clinicians (who demand open and easy access to databases) and the patients (who prefer closed and private access to information stored in databases). The potential and capabilities of IT and its influence on the Indian healthcare is of utmost importance. Thus, this study examines the current status of security and privacy of various healthcare services/solutions implemented for electronic health records in India. This topic has not been sufficiently addressed by the existing healthcare solutions based on standards. The authors aim to bridge this gap by proposing a model to protect the security and privacy for Standardized Electronic Health Records EHRs database systems. A simulative analysis for the implementation of the proposed model has been presented. This will help in large scale deployment of secured Electronic Health Record systems that will benefit hospitals and their users. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.